I'm the Magic Saint, There Can't Be Two of Us😾
“Fiance?”
“Did you say fiance?”
“Engaged?”
Silence.
The surroundings fell quiet.
Everyone merely blinked, looking back and forth between Arden and the woman who claimed to be Arden's fiance.
In the stillness where not even the sound of breathing could be heard.
“Sir Arden, you were so difficult to meet! I went to the Imperial Knight Order and they said you’d gone somewhere, and when I went there, they said you’d gone somewhere else….”
“…….”
“…….”
“But the passing citizens all recognized your face, so I found you quickly!”
Going around looking for my fiance like that was rather romantic in its own way! Only the woman was bright and cheerful.
“But Sir Arden, what were you doing here?”
Did you come to buy clothes? The woman tilted her head.
“Why would Sir Arden go out of his way to buy clothes in a place like this? And it seems the door here is closed.”
The lights are off, too. She added, scanning me and my colleagues.
Ellie, Hazel… The fiance’s eyes, which had been carefully examining us one by one, stopped on me.
“…….”
“…….”
I stared right back at Arden’s fiance, who was looking at me intently.
“…….”
“…….”
Smoothly groomed hair. A coat with jeweled buttons. Gloves unworn at the fingertips. The faint scent of women’s eau de cologne.
She was like a princess.
And she was blonde.
“…….”
“…….”
“Hello?”
The habit of a clerk who greets a stranger first when making eye contact….
To me like that, the fiance nodded slightly.
“Yes. Hello.”
“What nonsense is this about a fiance?”
Arden, finally coming to his senses, cut in.
“A fiance? I’m not anyone’s fiance; I’m simply single. Are you sure you came looking for me?”
He was speaking to the woman, but his gaze was on me. Shaking his head, his eyes seemed to be saying something.
‘Absolutely not,’ ‘She’s a stranger.’
That’s what it seemed like, but.
The fiance’s opinion differed.
“Sir Arden, you haven’t heard the news yet.”
“What… news?”
“Well, your parents said you don’t come home often.”
“You know my house?”
“Of course I do!”
“…….”
“Please go home more often. Your mother was looking for you.”
“…Arden, you have a home?”
My expression stiffened at this first-time news.
Since Arden wasn’t an orphan like me, of course he would have a home.
That house was in Loire?
“I thought he lived in a boarding house because he had no home…….”
“…….”
“…So he really was keeping two households.”
“That’s not it!”
Arden, with a stern face, pressed the woman claiming to be his fiance.
“Who on earth are you? I’ve never seen you before!”
“But I have.”
“…….”
“Sir Arden, why are you pretending not to know me? We’ve met before.”
Could it be that you don’t remember me? she asked, then suddenly teared up. Arden flustered seeing the woman with tears welling in her eyes.
“I really…!”
“Wait, wait.”
It was Hazel who cut in.
Hazel raised her hand, looked back and forth between me, Arden, and the fiance, then asked.
“So, Sir Arden, it’s true that you’re engaged to her?”
“No!”
“Yes!”
The answers conflicted.
“It’s true! Sir Arden just doesn’t remember!”
As if frustrated, the woman tried to grab Arden’s arm, but he smoothly dodged.
Seeing that, the colleagues’ expressions turned icy.
I was bewildered, keeping my mouth shut…
and stayed still.
My head was spinning.
The feeling of a mole that happily poked its head out of its burrow in the morning only to be suddenly struck on the crown by a rubber mallet.
“I’m not lying! I even know where Sir Arden’s house is; you can just go with me to his parents’ house right now and check!”
The fiance insisted.
“Where in the world is an engagement that the party himself doesn’t know about!”
Arden vehemently denied it, but.
To the colleagues watching the situation, it seemed there was nothing more to see.
“Seraphina, do you know where Arden’s house is?”
Hazel asked.
She didn’t even call him ‘Sir’ Arden.
I shook my head.
“Ha.”
Hazel raised one corner of her mouth.
“…Trash.”
Ellie said, glaring at Arden.
“Piece of trash.”
Hazel said, raising a pair of scissors that she had for some reason.
“Trash.”
“Not recyclable.”
“Ptui.”
The other colleagues each added a word.
“I’m not eating this.”
Hazel stuffed the gelato back into the box and shoved it into Arden’s arms.
“Seraphina, you too. Give me yours.”
She took the pair of gelatos in my hands too and threw them in the trash can.
“Customers, we’re closed. Would you please leave?”
In an utterly cold voice, Ellie pointed at the door.
“It’s really not true!”
Though it was Ellie who told him to leave, Arden kept making excuses while looking only at me, so Hazel grabbed a broom and pushed him.
“Get out, get out!”
“Seraphina, let’s go!”
When I came to my senses, like a famous actor surrounded by bodyguards, I was already standing far away from Arden.
“No, I—!”
“We don’t want to hear it!”
The colleagues had become resolute, as if they had never smiled at Arden before.
At their hardline attitude, Arden was at a loss for words and touched his forehead.
“Fine, let’s go then.”
He turned to the fiance who had stuck beside him in the meantime with eyes that said he was going crazy.
“You’re really claiming to be my fiance?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!”
“Let’s sort you out first. I don’t know you, so I need to find out how you came to spout such nonsense.”
Arden ground his teeth and spoke, then suddenly turned to look at me.
Looking at the watch on his wrist.
“One hour.”
“…….”
“I’ll take care of this and come back within an hour, so wait at home.”
Having said that, Arden strode away and disappeared.
“Let’s go together, Sir Arden!”
The fiance chased after him.
“…….”
I merely blinked for a while, then.
“Extra, extra! The Magic Saint, who hasn’t been seen for several days, has appeared again!”
“Ah. Right.”
What was going on with this now?
I grabbed a passing paperboy and bought a copy of the Imperial Daily.
And.
“Guys, I’ll head out first.”
I folded the newspaper under my arm and looked for a hired carriage.
“Unnie, where are you going?”
“The Grand Temple.”
“Cassian!”
Cassian, who had been drying his wet hair with a towel, saw me climbing through his office window and narrowed his eyes.
“You came straight from the fitting room?”
“Yeah, sorry… I’m too late, aren’t I?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Cassian said.
“It would have mattered if you’d come just five minutes earlier.”
“Huh?”
“Because then I wouldn’t have been wearing clothes.”
You know you have to take responsibility after seeing a priest naked, right?
“Ah.”
Only then did I realize that I had acted quite unreasonably by showing up unannounced in someone else’s room past midnight.
I also realized that because I had walked here without wiping off the melted gelato I’d been holding earlier, the back of my hand was still covered in chocolate syrup.
“I’m really sorry.”
“I told you it’s fine. Rather, it’s a shame.”
You don’t seem fine, though.
“To think I could have gained a spouse. Truly a shame.”
“…….”
Just get angry instead.
Cassian asked.
“So, did you end up eating the gelato earlier?”
“…….”
Gelato… Right, this all started with gelato.
“Seraphina?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just.”
I looked at Cassian, pushing his wet hair back.
In the back, Dubu was sleeping with all four legs splayed in every direction, using a black rabbit as a pillow.
“What happened?”
“Look at this first.”
I placed down the newspaper I’d brought.
“It just came out as an extra.”
Without replying, Cassian took the newspaper and quickly read the front page. Soon, Cassian’s expression grew as serious as mine.
[Magic Saint Sena Saves Newlywed Couple of District 15 Assaulted by Capital Defense Force Member!]
[‘If you thought you could get away with assaulting an imperial citizen, think again.’ Full message from the Magic Saint on page 2……]
“…This.”
“Yeah. That couple from back then.”
Remember the Rozena incident?
There was a time when Cassian, after I found out his identity, decided to test me by asking me to choose whom to help among three incidents.
‘So you’re telling me to choose for myself who to help among these?’
‘Yeah.’
Among the choices Cassian gave then, there was this couple’s incident.
-A newlywed couple living in District 15.
One day, a Capital Defense Force member came and interrogated them about stealing a neighbor’s chicken. In the process, a scuffle broke out and the husband was severely injured. They protested to the Capital Defense Force, but the force dismissed it saying they ‘were just doing their job.’
And the reason I chose to help actress Rozena instead of this couple back then was:
‘The report only mentioned that the husband was injured; it didn’t say they didn’t steal the chicken.’
If the couple really were thieves who stole the chicken and the husband was injured during the scuffle, then it wouldn’t be assault on an innocent imperial citizen but the process of subduing a criminal.
‘How the husband resisted during arrest, how injured the Capital Defense Force member was. I don’t know any of that.’
Since I didn’t know the exact circumstances, I judged it wasn’t something to rashly intervene in.
But this.
“Someone is impersonating the Magic Saint Sena and helped the couple.”
“Cassian, did you know Arden has a fiance?”
We spoke at the same time.
Cassian’s eyes widened at my words.
Magic Saint Seraphina.